MediaTek's 10nm Helio X30 SoC to arrive in devices next quarter

MediaTek back in August unveiled the Helio X30, a deca-core SoC destined for mobile devices in 2017. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the chipmaker revealed that its new silicon is finally entering mass production and should make an appearance in consumer devices during the second quarter.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon and Samsung Exynos alternative is MediaTek’s first mobile chip built on a 10nm manufacturing process. It consists of two high-end ARM Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.5GHz, four mid-range ARM Cortex-A53 cores running at 2.2GHz and four conservative ARM Cortex-A35 cores ticking along at 1.9GHz.

There’s also an Imagination PowerVR Series7XT Plus GPU clocked at 800MHz that’s said to be 2.4 times faster and 60 percent more energy efficient than the Mali-T880 MP4 found in the X20.

The chip supports a display resolution of up to 2,560 x 1,600 pixels and up to 8GB of RAM. It also incorporates two 14-bit image signal processors (ISPs) supporting 16+16MP dual cameras which MediaTek says allows for advanced functionality such as wide + zoom combination lenses for real-time depth of field effects, fast auto exposure and real-time de-noise in low-light conditions.

MediaTek’s latest also utilizes CorePilot 4.0, a set of advanced task scheduling technologies designed to increase power efficiency, make devices less prone to overheating and boost the speed of everyday tasks like browsing and gaming.

All things considered, the X30 is said to deliver a 35 percent increase in performance and more than 50 percent power savings compared to MediaTek’s previous generation chip.